Disney CEO Bob Chapek signaled his interest in integrating Hulu into Disney+ after the company buys out the remaining rights from Comcast.Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Tech Conference on Wednesday, Chapek said he was interested in a faster timeline to acquiring Comcast’s remaining stake in Hulu before the 2024 deadline and his desire to remove the “friction” for consumers when they have to jump between the Disney+ and Hulu apps to access content.“There’s a little bit of consumer friction there in terms of having to go out of one app and into another and so I think we, long term, we can avoid that. But 2024 is not that far away,” Chapek said. “We’d have to have full ownership of Hulu to integrate it into Disney+. We would love to get to the endpoint earlier, but that obviously takes some level propensity for the other party to have reasonable terms for us to get there. And if we could get there, I would be more than happy to try to facilitate that.”The top Disney executive also reiterated his interest in keeping ESPN, despite recent calls from the activist investor Dan Loeb to sell or spin off the sports brand. (On Sept. 11, Loeb backed off, pointing to a “better understanding of ESPN’s potential as a stand-alone business.”)“We’ve been pretty staunch supporters, despite the tremendous market demand for us to sell it or spin it, or — there’s a lot of people that are interested in getting a piece of ESPN, but we like our own hand,” he said. “We like how it sits. We like our long-term strategic plan, and we’re confident that the best place for ESPN is within the Walt Disney Company.”As for Disney’s global streaming presence, Chapek said the company remained “bullish on India” despite passing on the cricket streaming rights for the Indian Premier League.“We did a surgical plan to try to get to linear rights through IPL, knowing that the market got a little too frothy for us on the digital rights,” Chapek said. Instead, the company won the linear and digital rights to another cricket league — the International Cricket Council — for what Chapek described as a “much better value” and licensed those TV rights to a different broadcaster.“It’s a great example of us trying to seek value different ways, not to say ‘on, off’ or ‘yes or no,’ but what we do, the extents that we go to try to orchestrate a scenario that’s going to be a creative for our shareholders [that enables] us to still play the growth game in that particular market.”
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